Friday Fudge

Welcome to Friday Fudge. If it’s weird, funny, or strange motorcycle news, or it just plain won’t fit anywhere else on the site – you’ll find it here.

Mean streets

Reduced to riding in trucks, the Taliban figure out how to get their two-wheelers back. Photo: Wikipedia

For years, the Biker has been a stock “bad guy” character in the movies. According to Hollywood, Bikers are known for wearing leather vests and show their tough-guy attitude by always scowling.

But, Hollywood’s gotten it wrong. You could apply their leathers-and-a-sneer description to all the mild-mannered wannabes who ride no further than Tim Hortons and drink nothing stronger than espresso, while the real meanies, the ones you want to avoid, wear turbans and sandals instead of beanies and officially branded leather boots. I’m talking about the Taliban.

You see, the Taliban are true devotees to the motorcycle-centric life. We’re not sure how they combine the “Live to ride, ride to live” ethos with bomb vests, but the fact is, when the official government banned motorcycle travel in southern Afghanistan recently, to try to restrict the terrorists from using their vehicle of choice, the Taliban responded.

They ended up shutting down dozens of primary schools across the country, until the government caved. Talk about anti-social behaviour – those guys wearing the Sons of Anarchy hoodies still have a lot to learn.

More trouble in Thailand

That’s right, we have more troubling news for motorcyclists from Thailand this week. Motorcycle-based tourists have had a long run of bad luck in the Asian country lately; unlike the subjects of the last two week’s Fudge updates, the latest victim didn’t have his bike stolen. Instead, he drove it into a hole in the street.

We’re not talking about any old pothole, though. We’re talking about a hole that was 2.5 metres deep, full of water, with insufficient barriers and signs to keep tourists out.

The Belorussian wasn’t fazed, though; he dove to the bottom of the hole and fished his bike out. Not content with saving his own two-wheeler, he repeated the performance for a Thai rider, who ended up in the hole shortly afterwards. Watch the video!

Getaway goof-up

This is about the only vehicle the suspect would have been safe in, it sounds like. Photo: Wikipedia

When you’re trying to evade the fuzz, one of the basic skills is to avoid trashing your own vehicle. However, a police chase in Richmond Hill showed that even this foundational skill is beyond some getaway drivers.

According to police, they arrived at a break-and-entry in progress on the corner of Yonge and Silverwood, and their suspect fled the scene on a motorcycle. However, the flight was short-lived, as the fleeing rider crashed into a Lexus.

Then, police say, the rider car-jacked the Lexus SUV, and took off again. One problem: The suspect then drove over his own abandoned motorcycle, trashing it, and causing him to crash the Lexus in the process, the cops said.

Police later caught up with their man a while later with the aid of a canine unit and a helicopter, but we suspect if they’d just let him roam free, he probably would have ran in front of a bus, or tripped and fell into the path of a subway train.

Wile E. Wolf?

Bartlett kept shooting photos as the wolf followed him down the highway. Photo: Tim Bartlett

An Albertan motorcyclist had a thrill last week when he took his new motorcycle out for the cruise, and had a wolf encounter. Tim Bartlett, a mechanic in Banff, almost hit a wolf that jumped out at him while he rode British Columbia’s Highway 93. He said he came within a meter of colliding with the wolf.

What did Bartlett do after the close encounter? He pulled over, pulled a u-turn, pulled out his camera, and rode back to take a picture of the wolf … which decided to chase him down the road for about a kilometre, while Bartlett kept snapping away.

Some people are saying the wolf was playing with Bartlett, some people are saying it was hungry. In any case, Bartlett got some amazing pictures of the oversized canine in action, and thankful

Sheepish destruction

Here’s another case of an animal with baaaaaa-d behaviour, as a motorcyclist gets … rammed … at the end of this video.

The Canadian Motorcycle Guide

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It’s been the best of times, it’s been the worst of times, to paraphrase Charles Dickens. If he’d ridden a motorcycle (and he died in 1870, so it’s unlikely), then he’d probably have shared our frustration at Canada Moto Guide.
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